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2005 National SCRABBLE® Championship Commentary: Before the Tournament

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Go to: Anagrams Championship, Before the Tournament, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4, Round 5, Round 6, Round 7, Round 8, Round 9, Round 10, Round 11, Round 12, Round 13, Round 14, Round 15, Round 16, Round 17, Round 18, Round 19, Round 20, Round 21, Round 22, Round 23, Round 24, Round 25, Round 26, Round 27, Round 28, Final Round 1, Final Round 2, Final Round 3, Final Round 4, Final Round 5.

Pretournament

Players started arriving as early as Monday for the NSC this year. They've taken trips with their families to nearby Lake Tahoe and have fully lived up the hotel itself. This place has many attractions, including a bowling alley and golfing range onto floating targets in the hotel's pond! On Thursday night, a Hawaiian singer held a massive outdoor concert that I got to hear fully from inside the hotel's 7th floor! Reno is vibrantly alive this time of year.

At noontime on Friday, event registration began outside the ballroom. Players received name badges on lanyards and event t-shirts after handing in completed tax forms. In case a player wins, these papers have to be on file, so there is little complaint about the paperwork.

This year, the computer committee is being led by Jeremy Brook, who has been involved in a couple past NSCs. We will miss Flo and Howard, who have been running the pairing for the past decade (at least), but we know we are in good hands. He and his committee met with John Chew at around 3pm to discuss the ins ans outs of getting results from their 6 pcs to his mac. Then, at 4pm the whole event committee met to prepare for tomorrow. Division leaders met their assistants, if they didn't already know one another, and among topics we covered was the new Merriam Webster prize, which we are launching for the first time this year. A $1,000 prize of which the winning particulars will be announced later on in the event. Secrets, secrets! It is all so exciting!

After a nourishing dinner in the hotel's swanky Asiana restaurant, we were set for the night's inaugural (we hope) Anagrams Championship. I'll discuss that in excruciating detail in a separate entry.

Saturday

Miraculously, with a combination of mice, hotel workers, and NSA staff, the ballroom was transformed overnight and this early morning, the room was tidily ready for the event. Banners and placards hung from the walls ands all the ballroom chandeliers and auxiliary lights were ablaze. Playing in a brightly lit ballroom makes the event so much more enjoyable for us all! Along the room's right side on risers is the NSC's main stage with a podium surrounded by six, well-spaced computers ready to pair each division. Beside them sit three skirted tables where the event Internet coverage is taking place. John Chew is wired to two laptops sitting at division 1's table 1 and I am to his left with a printer keeping us a good distance apart (I ask entirely too many questions as the event unfolds for John to get anything done, so he keeps his distance). Annotation will take place live from table 1 with Kristen Chew and Gregg Foster (spouses are roped into helping throughout this event!) at their laptops. Along the sides and down the length of the room, each division has an official skirted table set up perpendicular to the playing tables where all division leaders hold court. Opposite the stage, at the far end of the room, a large press table is stationed beside the giant SCRABBLE^® board. Today's message, spelled out in giant tiles across the board, is "DAY ONE SPREAD THE WORD."

A total of 12 laptops sit atop round oyster tables, draped in black tableclothes, around the room. Each is equipped with John Babina's WordJudge program for computer adjudication and the tables have a cleverly devised cardboard box with a slit in the top for sliding used challenge slips into. Going through used challenge slips: future fun!

Players nibbling on bagels and sipping coffee milled around the registration/foyer area, waiting for the doors to be opened. Jeremy and his crack staff made last-minute changes to the day's first round pairing. We start today with a total of 684 players. Though we are even, there are two uneven divisions, which means two byes per round for the whole group. The divisions break down to: 87 in division 1, 108 in division 2, 135 in division 3, 124 in division 4, 94 in division 5, and 136 in division 6.

Only a few minutes past the specified time of 8:55am, we opened the ballroom's doors to a rush of expectant players on a table-finding mission. Like old pros, all were seated quickly and we moved onto opening comments. Laura Klein, again at the tournament directing helm, went over some routine details and some new ones, which included going over the new result slips. Taking a page from the School SCRABBLE^® program, the NSC is now using triplicate result slips. And what is on them is slightly different now, too. Instead of all that complicating math we expected in past years, we ask for very few things now: player number, player name, who went first, who went second, and each player's score at the endgame. The pairing program has always been able to compute the math perfectly, so now we just rely on it more to do that job. At the game's end, both players fill out this result slip, giving the original to their division leader and each player taking a carbon copy of the slip. This way, collecting the contestant scorecards is now a thing of the past. There isn't a person on the event committee that isn't very pleased with this development. Division leaders and computer staff will actually get to go to lunch now!

After Laura's comments, John D. Williams, Jr., the NSA's Executive Director, took to the microphone and gave the shortest speech to date. He always speaks briefly and this year it was even shorter and sweeter. He wished the players well, thanked the NSA staff for organizing the event so quickly, and Laura for her efforts at keeping the event moving smoothly. And with that, he told the players to begin.